Advice for User Experience Managers

User Experience Design Management Lessons

Designers are natural optimists. Where others see disorganization, designers see the prospect of beauty. Where others wish to cut corners, designers take pride in completeness and quality. Moreover, designers are problem solvers, collaborators and, yes, a bit eccentric, too! We are the people who are wanted — who are needed — to be constant, positive creative, cultural and strategic forces within companies.​However, we would argue that while we can be epicenters of culture and innovation, our discipline hasn’t devoted much attention to successful management of our organizations. Far too often, we manage work, not the individual or the collective.

For us, a breakthrough in thinking about how to structure design departments was found in the work of Edward Deming, often referred to as the father of quality.​Deming, an academic who was brought to Japan in the 1950s following World War II, is credited with being a leading figure in post-war Japan’s economic rise. Deming based his entire business philosophy on an ideal of cooperation and complete employee fulfillment. Much of his experience and life work were codified in his brilliant 14 points.

These 14 points are an exact blueprint for how to build and scale a thriving design organization. We encourage every reader to share these with their teams and to ask for a grade on each point. We promise that you’ll find immediate areas of opportunity. If you commit to the changes, you will have all the guidance needed to build a connected, high-morale and thriving organization.

Create constancy of purpose for improving products and services.

​Adopt the new philosophy.

Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.

End the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimize total cost by working with a single supplier.

Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service.

Institute training on the job.

Adopt and institute leadership.

Drive out fear.

Break down barriers between staff areas.

Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.

Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.

Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual rating or merit system.

Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.

Put everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.​

We would like to leave you with Deming’s final point, point 14: “Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.”​To us, this point reaffirms that the foundation of design thinking, customer empathy and long-term vision is, in fact, the foundation of an enduring corporate strategy. Far too often in today’s economy, strategy is subject to the whims of short-term gains, which, over time, comes back to haunt company and consumer alike. Or, inversely, as the adage goes, if you solve your customer’s problems, they’ll solve your business problems.

We'll end with this: Invest in yourself. Invest in learning new skills. Invest in your design team. When you do, you’ll see great returns for yourself, the team, the customer and the business.